I have a question. Is living for God a religious act or is it the action of simple faith? To be fair it is a bit of a rhetorical question for me. Even if there was no Church around I would still be living for Him.
Many years ago Sue and I went to an orientation weekend for a group whose focus was to encourage people to move into towns in the Outback of Australia where to quote Banjo Paterson “men of religion are rare”. His comment was a description of ministers in the 1880s but the fact was then and probably still is now, that men of faith are conspicuous by their absence in outback towns and generally there is no church extant.
The strategy of this group was to encourage people of faith to go to these towns and by the evidence of their life to build a Community of Faith. The down to earth, here and now nature of people in these towns meant that there was a natural resistance to evangelistic outreach.
For some reason, long forgotten we didn’t go out to live in the outback then. Ironically perhaps now the “outback” seems to have come to the cities and we are all in the middle of a society that denies God and resists anything that has even the notion of being God based.
Take for instance many of the charities that have served the hurting people of our communities. A great number of them have modified their public persona to make it a more “not for profit” organisation than a “Christian” one.
For many sincere believers it is easier to live their Monday to Friday as a working week rather than an opportunity to live out their/our faith in front of their co-workers. In a sense it is a valid argument that a person’s job is stressful enough and if people identify them as a Christian that is enough. The problem is that if we are not distinguishable from them workers around us, we dumb down what we believe, and your co-workers can think there is no advantage in becoming a Christian.
This witness of the faith relies on a number of things but more importantly it relies on the absence of things.
One of the most significant of these no-no’s to live our faith not just to talk it. People with whom we have a casual relationship will often see it as “Bible bashing” for us to try to speak about things of faith until they are ready to hear these truths.
The single most effective means of communicating the Good News to people we work with is to be “real” and pro-actively live our faith. Obviously this can be difficult in a stress laden environment, but others notice if we can work in a way that conquers difficulties and stay positive when things start to come unstuck.
For mine a faith for life relies in living for the Master, as He would live if He was in our place. It is an exciting challenge and if we can all find that centre of relying on Him to enable us to live as He would we will build a Community of Faith. Then that will become the Living Church that I believe He wants to build. Not only that but we will not need to seek out the unbelievers – they will queue up at the entrance.
It isn’t Disneyworld it is a Church that has its foundation in the joy of the Lord.
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